Maybe One Day They'll Be Free
by MusicalsandMordred
Summary: In which Cosette and Eponine are much more similar than anyone would give them credit for. Two-shot!
1. In My Life, I've Been Alone

**A/N: This is an experiment in me just sitting down and writing something in one go that I've had in mind. This is only my second fic ever and my first Les Mis one! I'm pretty stoked you could say.**

 **This was inspired by firstly a beautiful pic I saw of alternating Cosette and Eponine pictures from the movie with the text you will read below (I take no credit for that, whoever created that image was a genius who so accurately described what I thought about these girls.) The other inspiration was the fact that I'm doing Les Mis in the fall, and while I do like Eponine more, I'm a soprano and much more a Cosette. It just resulted in me thinking about how similar these two are, something you don't really realize unless you think about it in depth.**

 **The bolded parts below are what I think especially apply to each girl.**

* * *

 _A girl full of anger,_

 _ **A girl full of hope**_ _,_

 _A girl with a mother who just couldn't cope,_

 _ **A girl who felt caught**_ _,_

 _Thought no one could see,_

 _Maybe one day she'll be free_

* * *

She had a roof over her head. She had ample food, clothing, other necessities. She had been rescued by the kindest and saintliest of men, had grown up with his love and protection.

She had a home.

Cosette was well aware of everything she had to be thankful for. There was much, and she made a conscientious effort every day to not take any of it for granted. Compared to so many, she was beyond blessed.

And yet, Cosette was lonely. She knew no people her own age, had neither the benefit nor the opportunity to make friends. It was only ever her and Papa, and she would never, ever tell him this, but sometimes, her loneliness threatened to crush her at night. What would it be like, she wondered, to go to a party, and spend the night laughing and eating and merry-making with jolly people? What would it be like to have a conversation in a room noisy with other peoples' chatter? To have to raise her voice just to be heard?

It was so very quiet, just her and Papa.

Cosette was unsure of what she would have been like if she'd been a normal girl her age. She wasn't sure what normal girls did or felt, if they were loud and opinionated, or if crowds stirred their insides. She wasn't sure what normal girls felt around normal boys. _Boys,_ not white-haired men. How could she, when she'd never experienced any of it?

'Would you be as quiet as you are now, Cosette?' she asked herself.

She was so very sick of being quiet.

And sick of quiet things in general: books, sewing, needlework, flowers, gardens, drawing or writing or thinking. She was done with these things. She wanted music and laughter and maybe just a little bit of chaos. Everything in her world was so ordered, it would be nice to expand once and a while.

She never told Papa any of this. She was very careful not to let him see. Things like going out into the city worried him so, and she didn't want him to worry. He would worry, for example, if Cosette told him that sometimes she felt so trapped sitting in the garden and unable to see much of the world outside of it that she couldn't breath. So she didn't tell him that she felt like a lark caught in a cage. She told him she was as fine as she'd always been, and she waited.

Perhaps that sounds apathetic or lazy to you, waiting, not doing anything on her own or defying her father. But you see, the one thing Cosette had always had in abundance was hope. Even when she'd been living with the Thenardiers and had had so much more to lament, there'd always been that spark they couldn't destroy. She'd had to believe in something then, and believe in it she still did: that there was a solution coming, that she only had to endure the cage for a little while longer before a change came that granted her her freedom.

And then, the day came when she met the boy she'd fallen in love with at the gate to her cage, and she was proven right.


	2. All My Life I've Been On My Own

_**A girl full of anger**_ _,_

 _A girl full of hope,_

 _A girl with a mother who just couldn't cope,_

 _A girl who felt caught,_

 _ **Thought no one could see**_ _,_

 _Maybe one day she'll be free_

* * *

She had a crumbling roof over her head. She was deprived of food, clothing, and many other basic human necessities. She associated with the roughest and most dangerous of men, and had grown up with one of them as her father.

She had no home.

Eponine dealt with all this every day. She had much to be bitter about, as so many were more fortunate than she for no other reason than circumstance.

So why then was she focusing on her loneliness? Why, of all her troubles and misfortunes, was the fact that she had no friends the most painful? It had only ever been her and her mismatched family, though once they had lived more joyfully, and had had a little girl as a somewhat servant to do all their bidding.

'Oh, how the mighty have fallen,' Eponine thought as she watched her father in his guise as a beggar pleading with a white-haired man. Though it wasn't as if he had ever been particularly mighty, she supposed. She let her gaze rove over the crowded city street, and felt the sadness and loneliness plague her stomach again. Everyone else had someplace to go, people to visit and to care about them. Then she shook her head.

All this moping and self-pity disgusted her; she wished she were angry instead. Anger was so much better to sustain and fuel than dragging, crushing sadness. But ever since Marius…She found herself casting her gaze to him across the street, taking in that face she loved so much to lose herself in. He never noticed when she did this, would _never_ notice (hope was never something Eponine had in much reserve) so there was no harm. Other people would see and know, but other people be damned.

Then, Eponine followed her love's gaze, and saw that it was locked with another's, a _girl's_. She felt the most toxic flare of anger, such anger as she'd never felt before, even about her family's fall into (more) disrepair. It threatened to bowel her over, such was its strength. That a blonde bourgeoisie could flounce in in her silk dress and simply win Marius over…

Oh.

She recognized Cosette just as Inspector Javert arrived on scene and stole her attention away.

Later, Eponine would ask herself why she would put herself through all this torture just to help Marius. At the barricade, her thoughts asked her why she was so willing to die for a man who'd barely given her a second glance. She didn't have any particularly eloquent answer; all her anger from before had dried up as fast as it had sprung up. She loved Marius, certainly, and would do anything he asked and anything he wanted and anything to keep him safe.

But there was more, something she only realized as the bullet ripped through her, something she had time to ponder before Marius noticed (at last, he did see!)

There had been something in Cosette's eyes, some unidentifiable trigger that told Eponine she could feel kinship with the other girl. There was loneliness in Cosette, like there was loneliness in Eponine herself.

And Eponine hoped that Cosette would be freed from it as she was now being freed, in the arms of the boy she loved.

* * *

 **Was it my best? I dunno (no; it wasn't) but it demanded to be written and I don't think it would really service it to drag it out longer or really edit. If there are mistakes, I apologize!**

 **Reviews would most certainly be appreciated if ya'll are so inclined! Thanks!**


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